


never going to save the world

by Anonymous



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Captivity, Future Fic, Kink Meme, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-03-14
Updated: 2011-03-18
Packaged: 2017-10-16 23:12:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Homesmut prompt:<br/>AU where Sburb/Sgrub never happened and the troll empire reaches our solar system. For whatever reason one or more of the kids is taken prisoner (a hostage maybe?) when the trolls start to attack Earth, and one of the trolls, who have been drafted into the military by now, ends up falling for them while they're guarding them. Illicit spaceship prison cell sex ensues. I like Jade/Tavros, Dave/Tavros, Dave/Terezi, Kanaya/Rose and John/Karkat, but really any troll/kid pairing would be great, whatever floats your boat.</p><p>bonus for any of the following:<br/>-the human intentionally seducing the troll in the hope of escape<br/>-fluffy hurt/comfort shit because the human is being tortured by their captors<br/>-the troll being expected by their superiors to fuck the prisoner as a show of dominance<br/>-...or another troll doing it while the one who wants to has to watch</p><p>(Planning to work in as much of this prompt as possible, but it may take a few chapters to get there!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They're in college when the aliens come. After years of being internet friends, finally all four of them are spending time together in real life, going to the same school, hanging out and avoiding assignments as a group. The transition from pesterchums to inseparable group went surprisingly easily. It's trite, but they're happy. Rose keeps her sardonic amusement to herself, and she never hears Dave complain about it, either. The four of them balance each other well. Then the aliens come, and ruin everything.

At first it seems like a media hoax in very poor taste. Aliens have invaded, and they really do look like gray-skinned humans after all? They call themselves _trolls_? It's too ridiculous.

Then they unleash their war machines. It stops being a joke and starts being a nightmare. They obliterate major cities on all the inhabited continents in a quick and terrifyingly brutal show of power, then broadcast their demand for Earth's surrender. The surviving world leaders give it to them.

It's a Monday in the middle of April when a troll ship lands on the green of their campus and begins to disgorge soldiers. "This is pretty much the worst birthday present ever," John says as they watch the troll soldiers take up positions around the quad.

"Worse than that awful patchwork rabbit Rose gave you?" Dave asks. Trying to keep the situation at a distance, Rose knows. This will go badly for him when his ironic armor cracks.

"Are you kidding?" John asks, eager to take the bait. "Frankenbunny was awesome."

"He was a handmade gift," Jade agrees. "That's much better than a...than this."

A troll in a fancier uniform, with a gleaming metal left arm, has come out of the ship. She lifts a microphone. "Young adult humans," she says. "We require two hundred volunteers to represent your species as we determine the fate of this planet. Volunteers should assemble in this green area. All other inhabitants of this compound," and here the troll smiles, obviously as delighted with herself as a Disney villain, "will be culled."

The rest of the day is chaos. Like most of the campus, the four of them try to flee rather than cooperate. They get lucky, in a horrible way, in that other students make it to the perimeter first. Those students get killed by the secondary troll force waiting at the campus border. John, Rose, Dave, and Jade get away, if by 'away' one means 'back into the trap.' John is stumbling, blank-eyed; the deaths are hardest on him. They try a second time to find a way out, and that time they spot the waiting troll soldiers before they get close enough to attract attention. They turn back.

Rose is the one who suggests that they volunteer. She doesn't like the idea, and the words are sour in her mouth. But they've seen that—cliche as it is—resistance is futile. They know what to expect if they fight. Captivity is far from ideal, but it doesn't have death's finality.

Dave can't come up with a smart-ass rejoinder for that logic. Jade looks like she's wishing for her rifle, but she nods her unhappy agreement. John says nothing, just follows them.

They approach the quad carefully. There's a hatch open on the side of the ship, and trolls are herding a few other students inside. One of the guard trolls sees them coming and steps up to intercept them. "More thmart oneth, huh?" he says.

Rose can see Dave's smirk out of the corner of her eye. "Don't," she says. Watching strangers die is bad enough.

He takes her hand and squeezes once. "You've still got room on your party boat, huh?" he says to the troll.

The troll actually smirks back. "Couldn't thtart the party without you," he says. _That's_ not ominous. "Go on."

Somewhere behind them, there are screams, but not for long. Rose flinches. She takes the first step up the ramp into the darkness of the troll ship, and the others follow her lead.


	2. Chapter 2

Threshecutioner Karkat Vantas has been having a shitty fucking day. This is nothing new. Most of his nine sweeps have been a succession of shitty fucking days, interrupted occasionally by unbelievably miserable days just for a change of pace. Today is shitty in a new and exciting way, though, which only happens occasionally. A new brand of horrible, something else for him to get used to. Today it's the aliens.

Karkat hates them _so much_ more than he hated the ones on the last planet they subdued. The last ones were so much more alien than these ones, weird little squelchy things that didn't look like people at all and only oozed black oil on his sickles. These ones, these "humans," are like reject trolls: hornless, too soft, oddly colored. And their blood....

The other threshecutioners have been joking about it: a race so pathetic that every single one of them has freak red blood, so red they'll have to add a new rung at the bottom of the hemospectrum. Karkat has been gritting his teeth so hard all day that he has a fucking migraine.

He stomps back to the respiteblock he shares with Sollux in the enlisted trolls' quarters, wishing (not for the first time) that their stupid ship had doors he could slam satisfactorily. Sollux is already there, already out of uniform, toying with his laptop as usual. "Hey, KK," he says, not looking up.

"You aren't going to ask how my day was?" Karkat demands. He tugs his own uniform jacket open and drops it on the floor.

Sollux looks up at him over the rims of those stupid two-colored shades. "Your day wath terrible," he says. "Your day ith alwayth terrible."

"Hmph," Karkat says. "You could at least pretend to care."

"If I encourage you, you'll jutht dwell on it," Sollux says. Karkat hates it when Sollux is having a reasonable phase. It means he's fucking right all the time, and that's obnoxious even in a moirail. Especially in a moirail. Whatever.

Karkat decides not to dignify this latest display of Sollux's perfect martyrdom with an answer. He strips off and climbs into his recuperacoon. "Turn the fucking lights off, asshole."

"Jutht a minute," Sollux says, still typing. Karkat heaves a put-upon sigh and decides to ignore him.

After what has to be at least _three_ minutes, the light in their respiteblock shuts off...and then Sollux is climbing into _Karkat's_ recuperacoon instead of his own. "Oh, piss off," Karkat says, shoving at him. "I'm not in the fucking mood."

Sollux nips at his shoulder. "You need to relakth," he says. "Let me help."

Karkat grumbles a little more for the sake of form, but this understanding they have isn't so bad. He lets Sollux take care of him, and that does take the edge off his tension enough that he can forget his anger for a little while and get some sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

Dave paces back and forth in his cell, trying not to blame Lalonde. This really isn't her fault. Yeah, she was the one who said they should give in, but it _did_ really look like these troll creeps were serious about offing everybody who didn't. Three steps from one side of the cell to the other, turn, back the other way.

It's just, this is the kind of thing that makes it really hard for a guy to keep his cool. Even a guy with vast reserves of cool to draw on.

The trolls split them all up when they got here. One prisoner per cell, no exceptions. Lalonde is probably holding it together. She's pretty tough. Jade's kind of spacy, though, and John was already in bad shape when they got to the ship. Dave is in the sort of state where, a few years ago, he'd have been making outrageous metaphors about pirouettes and handles. And back then he didn't even have any real problems, compared to this.

Eventually the ship takes off, a sort of rumbling and shaking underfoot, like an airplane liftoff but much more distant. Some time after that, there are sounds from the corridor outside Dave's cell. He comes up to the door, peering out the little window to see what's going on.

There's a troll coming up the row, pushing little boxes into the slots set in beside the cell doors. Feeding them, Dave decides. He watches the troll get closer. This one has much bigger horns than the ones he saw earlier. The horns seem like a good way to tell them apart. They're all the same color, but the shape varies a lot.

When the troll gets to his door and opens the slot to push in his little box, Dave tugs off one sneaker and jams it into the slot to keep it open. "Hey," he says. He waves to the troll through his little shatterproof window.

"You can't, uh, do that," the troll says. He frowns. "Remove your, uh, foot covering."

"In a minute," Dave says. "Are you the guy in charge of feeding all the prisoners?" He really hopes this jackass doesn't insist on calling them 'volunteers.'

The troll nods uncomfortably. "For now," he says. "We have, uh, studied your nutritional needs. So you can't, uh, pretend that, we're poisoning you."

"Yeah? Your freaky alien nutritionists read up on allergies, I hope," Dave says. He's getting off track, but this troll is a weird one.

"I'm not sure," the troll says. He frowns again, less like he's trying to be scary and more like he's just confused. "I just deliver, uh, the meals."

Dave rolls his eyes. "I'm shocked," he says. "On Earth, it's really common for important guys with all the answers to do menial labor."

The troll blinks those freaky yellow eyes at him. "Perhaps that is why, uh, you were so easy to, uh, subdue."

"I was being sarcastic," Dave points out.

"I was not," the troll says.

Fine. Ten points to the stammering troll. "Okay well the point is," Dave says, "I want to know if my friends are okay. Can you check on them for me and let me know?"

"What's a friend?" the troll asks.

Jesus Christ on a fucking pogo stick, they really are like every bad b-movie alien ever. Dave explains the concept, in simple goddamn words so it'll be easy to grasp. It turns out friendship is a little like the thing trolls call moirallegiance, but the guard troll is scandalized that Dave has more than one of them.

"Can we chat about cultural differences later?" Dave asks eventually. "I really want to know if they're okay."

"None of the, uh, humans we brought on board have, uh, been damaged," the troll says.

Dave draws on his vast reserves of cool. "Yeah, but are they _okay_ ," he says. If he has to explain everything to this gray-faced jackass, shit is really seriously going to seek a permanent separation from the handle.

"Um," the troll says. For a second he has an almost human expression, like he feels bad about being part of this whole genocide thing. "I'll check. Which ones, um, are your friends?"

Okay. It's not much of an opening, but it's a start. Dave will work with what he's got.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Most of the trolls don't have their battle damage in this AU, I decided; it just didn't make sense for them to make it through the culling process and into the military if they were disabled, given the ruthless eat-or-be-eaten nature of troll culture.
> 
> ...Vriska still gets the metal arm, though. idk. it looks fuckin' cool. that's all there is to say about that.

The mess hall is busy tonight, since everyone wants to talk about the new aliens. Most of the ship is crewed by younger trolls, so they haven't fought their way through much of the galaxy yet. This is the first time they've run into a troll-like species. Terezi threads her way through the tables, passing up the chance to sit with the other officers—high and mighty Captain Serket is getting on her nerves again lately, and not in a sexy caliginous way—and plunking down at a table with their old flarping rivals. Aradia's off-again on-again flushed crush is there, with his adorably prickly moirail, and even Kanaya, who seems to surface from her lab for meals expressly so that she can auspiticize between Tavros and the whole rest of the ship.

Tavros is in the middle of saying something when Terezi sits down, and he freezes up. As always. "Talking about me?" she asks with a grin.

"N-no," Tavros says. He's still such a cringing wriggler sometimes.

"Tavros and I were assigned to supervise the humans in the first block," Aradia says. "They are a popular topic of conversation this evening."

"I don't see what's so interesting about them," Karkat grumbles, stabbing his rations viciously with his nutrition pick. "They're just like trolls except shittier in every possible way."

Kanaya nods calmly. "That is precisely what makes them so fascinating," she says. "In what ways are they similar? Do they have any adaptations that would actually be useful for us, or are they as underdeveloped as they seem?"

"We're not going to dithcover anything we want to know," Sollux says. "It'th a terrible idea."

Aradia smiles, reaching over to squeeze his hand. Terezi has never been able to see why Sollux's doomsaying should make him pitiable instead of kickable, herself.

Instead of watching their ridiculous display, Terezi says, "So have we found out anything weird about them yet?"

"That's what, uh, I was saying," Tavros volunteers. "One of them, uh, talked to me, and he said, uh, he has, uh, three moirails."

Terezi blinks, impressed. "Kinky," she says. "Do they have multiples of everything else?" It's hard to imagine, sustaining that kind of intensity for multiple trolls. Sure, there are short-term black encounters when there's interfaction fighting or a particularly spirited prisoner falls into the legislacerators' grasp, but it's not as if they tend to get _serious_ about that many trolls at once. You'd get unbalanced one way or another, and that's a quick and easy way to get yourself killed.

"We didn't talk about, uh, the other quadrants," Tavros says. He shifts in his seat. "I was just, uh, feeding him."

Karkat has finally started eating, but now he says, "You'd be a pathetic fucking interrogator anyway," through his mouthful of stewed herdbeast.

"I doubt somehow that you would fare much better," Kanaya says. "Though certainly your failings would be of a different nature."

"There'th only one perthon at thith table who'th trained ath an interrogator," Sollux points out. "But I thtill don't think we'd learn anything conthtructive."

"It isn't up to us in any case, is it?" Aradia asks. "At least until we reach the holding facility." She nods to Tavros. "We were ordered to minimize contact with them."

Kanaya nods. "We want to avoid contamination of the specimens before we can get them to a controlled setting," she says. "But after that, we may find it helpful to examine them psychologically as well as physically. They have produced much documentation on their own species, but of course it is flawed by the assumptions they make about themselves. A more complete understanding will require direct observation."

Terezi grins. A whole new alien species for her to poke and prod? She'll have to see what she can learn about their justice system, even if there's no way it could be as rigorous as Alternia's. "When we get there, then," she says, "the legislacerators are _definitely_ interested in taking this case."


	5. Chapter 5

By the time the trolls' ship lands again, John's starting to get his feet back under him. It helps a lot that he's heard from his friends—the nervous troll who brought his first meal told him Dave was worried about him, and then later the pretty troll (is it okay to think of her that way? is he betraying humanity if he does that?) who brought the next meal passed on messages from Rose and Jade, too. John hopes the trolls sent back his reassurances and his best wishes for everybody. It's really nice of them to worry so much, and they have to try to keep each other's spirits up. He tries to keep thinking about them, and not let himself dwell on any of the other stuff the trolls have done.

When they land, the ship shakes for a minute and makes all these banging and whooshing noises, just like something out of a science fiction movie. They're living in a science fiction movie now, aren't they? One of the creepy ones. It's a little harder to play the street tough maverick in real life. Maybe that's because John is too conscious of what he actually does have to lose.

There are muffled sounds from the hallway, footsteps and doors clanging. Eventually one of the trolls comes to open the door to John's cell, gesturing for him to come out. His double horns look familiar, and John thinks back to the first day. "Come on," the troll says. "Thith way."

John brightens at the lisp. "You're the guy who brought us in, aren't you?" he says. "I recognize your, um, accent."

The troll grimaces, showing off a _lot_ of sharp teeth. "My lithp," he says. "Call it what it ith."

"Um, if you want," John says. "I didn't want to be offensive or hurt your feelings or something."

"Oh, great," the troll says. "I've got _humanth_ worrying about making me feel bad now? I'm tho pathetic."

"Sollux, what the hell are you doing?" Another troll stomps up to loom in the doorway of John's cell. Well, he's sort of looming. He's not tall enough for a really _good_ loom, but he's pretty enthusiastic about it. "We're _moving_ the prisoners, fuckass, not chatting them up."

"Sorry," John says. "That was kind of my fault."

The new troll stares at John like he's grown an extra head. "Are you out of your mind?" he demands. "Are you _volunteering_ for—"

Sollux the lispy troll puts his hand on the other one's shoulder. "KK," he says. "Take it eathy. I can move thith one. Why don't you go get one of the otherth?"

" _You_ go get one of the others," the angry troll says. "This one is bad for you."

"If you thay tho," Sollux says. He smiles like he thinks it's cute, so John figures that all the yelling and cursing can't be too serious. "Thankth, KK."

The angry troll shrugs Sollux's hand off, glaring at John. "Out," he says.

John raises his hands in the universal _calm down, dude_ gesture. "I'm coming," he says. There's an awkward moment when he steps up to the door of the cell and the troll hasn't stepped back yet, and John has to just smile at him uncomfortably until he figures it out. The troll steps back, glaring at him as if he's daring John to say something about it, so John figures he just won't.

"Hurry up," the troll says, grabbing John's arm and steering him down the hall. There are other trolls at other cells, taking people out the same way, but John doesn't get much of a chance to look at them with the way his troll is dragging him along.

"So, uh," he says, "your name is Kaykay?"

"What?" the troll says. He glares at John again. "No. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

John shrugs as best he can with his arm pinned. "Well, it's what your friend called you."

"What is this _friend_ crap?" the troll asks. "Trolls don't have friends. And why the bleeding fuck would you need to know my name anyway?"

"Well," John says slowly, "I guess because otherwise I'll have to just keep thinking of you as 'the angry one.'"

The troll stares at him for a minute, kind of like he's wishing he could make John's head explode just by wanting it really bad. It's a good thing trolls can't actually do that, John decides.

Sollux comes up the hall, escorting a red-haired girl John doesn't recognize. He elbows his angry friend—it's dumb to say they're not friends, it's obvious they are—and says, "Now who'th chatting them up, fuckath?"

"Shut up!" John's angry troll barks, but Sollux keeps walking instead of staying to be yelled at. John decides that Sollux is a little bit like Dave. Not a lot, of course. But a little. He's kind of cool.

Once the angry troll has his composure back a little, he drags John down the hallway after Sollux and the girl. There are about a million more questions John wants to ask, starting with _Where are you taking us?_ and _Can I see my friends?_ , but it seems like asking will just mean more stopping to yell and flail, and that gets awkward.

It's twilight outside, and the air is dry. The trolls are taking them from the ship to a big factory-looking building. "Are we still on Earth?" John asks. He can't help it.

"Augh!" his troll says. "Yes, you walking loadstain! There's no way we could have made it to another planet this fast!"

"Well, I don't know what kind of technology trolls have," John points out. "Maybe you have a warp drive on that ship or something."

His troll tries to stare a hole in his head again, and then shoves him toward the building. "Move."

They get inside the building and John realizes that it isn't a factory after all. It's a prison. John feels a nasty shiver down his back and wishes—it won't do any good to beg, he knows that. This troll won't give him any breaks. His breathing is getting shaky despite himself and he wishes he could just turn and run, but the troll's grip on his arm is too solid.

"Humans are a really social species," John says hurriedly as the troll pushes him toward the open door of a cell. "We need to spend time with each other to thrive. So if you've got us here to study us or whatever—"

"Don't fucking tell me," the angry troll says. "I'm not in charge of grubsitting you nooksniffers."

If nothing else, John thinks, he's getting a crash course on obscene troll words. He has to swallow the laugh that wants to come up at that thought, because he's pretty sure he'd sound hysterical. "So," he says as the troll pushes him into the cell, and maybe he's just trying to draw out the contact because he doesn't want to be alone again, but so what if he is? "So—who _should_ I tell?"

"Whoever gets stuck examining you!" the troll says, throwing his hands up in disgust as if John's the one doing something inexcusable here. "Now unless you have more fucking _fascinating_ discourse to provide, I still have work to do!"

He storms off without giving John any time to answer, and John hangs onto his composure by the barest thread. He won't think about the scary parts. "Fine," he mutters to the troll's retreating back, trying to make himself sound defiant. "'The angry one' it is."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Imperium](https://archiveofourown.org/works/243891) by [KR Grim (KR_Grim)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KR_Grim/pseuds/KR%20Grim)




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